Introduction:You may vaguely remember a little application called MXS Bike Setup Application.It was made with much love and care by me. However that does not mean it was not a buggy piece of gosa (Browncoats unite!). It was made as I was just learning about programming and since then I learned quite a bit.

So with that said, here is MXS Garage.More features.Better organized.Easier to use.And A LOT easier to install, it only requires the install of the application itself, not a bunch of extra frameworks or database applications.

Warning: This is a school project of mine, so I have been and will be experimenting with a lot of stuff in MXS Garage. This does not mean I will release anything that is utterly broken to the community.As an example I will be trying to get rid of the standard windows look in my application while keeping the functionality easy. For this reason I will probably be releasing 2 versions of the final application, one with the standard windows look and one with the additions and changes I made. So the application will hopefully suit all users.

Quick connect: Quickly connect to any of your favorite servers by clicking one of your saved servers in the quick connect menu.

Save skin setups: Save your favorite combination of skins and gear, all the skins you have saved on your pc will be automatically detected by MXS Garage.

All settings can be grabbed from the config file: Servers, bike settings, skins and gear can all be grabbed from the config file in their respective editors.

Fool proof setup management: The application knows what you are doing and warns you at appropriate times of possible mistakes or different solutions. helping you keep your setups clean and easy to use.

Color schemes : Choice of several color schemes to make MXS Garage look a little prettier.

Future features:

As you may notice this is only version 0.9, the full version will feature much more.

Bike preview: By popular demand I will be including a 3d bike preview option. this is made possible by the help I got from ddmx and wheels1758, so big thanks to those guys.

Save startup options: all the parameter options (--editor, --hidden-pause, etc) can be configured into a setup that you like. you can have multiple setups for many purposes; track editing, taking screenshots, filming, racing. the parameter options have never been easier to use.

Import and export: Importing and exporting setups for easy sharing. I have not worked out how I'm going to do this yet but it will definitely be in there.

Grabbing settings from existing setups: Have a setup that's similar to the one you want to create? this feature will make that easy by entering all values of a chosen setup into the setup you are currently creating or editing. (like copy and paste but better)

More visual changes and options: A continuation of my effort to remove myself from the horrible default windows look.These will be a bit of a secret.

Saving setups to (personal folder)/setups: Ability to save setups to text files in your personal folder. These can then be read into MXS at any moment by using the, /readsetup "setupname", command. For both Bike setups and Skin setups.

Creating desktop shortcuts to quick startups: This will create a custom shortcut that automatically starts MXS with the specifeid quick start setups.. so you can have multiple shortcuts that start MXS in different ways.

Feasible future features:

Language support: Ability to create language packs for different languages.

What is different in this application compared to the MXS Bike Setup Application?

Bike setups are now divided into 3 parts, a rider setup, an advanced stability setup and the actual bike setup.the rider and advanced stability setups can be linked to bike setups. one rider or advanced stability setup can be linked to multiple bike setups.This makes managing bike setups much easier.For a more in depth explanation read the tutorial. (can be found in the second post)(There is no help inside the applications yet, there will be help files in version 1.0 hopefully)

What is different in this application compared to the MXS Bike Setup Application?

A lot. Knowing the way MXS Bike Setup Application works will help you along but it is highly recommended you have a look at the tutorial. (Can be found in the second post on this page)If you post a question that I can answer with "Read the tutorial!", I will send my army of killer wiener dogs after you. (Do you know why they are called wiener dogs?... do you?)

What do I need to run MXS Garage?

The application is designed for Windows systems.The .Net framework 3.5 is all that is needed to run this application.This is usually installed on every windows XP or higher machine that is up-to-date. since a lot of applications use this framework.If you find you don't have it installed have a look here.If you have windows XP or higher then proceed to download and install the framework.If your system does not meet the requirements (you probably can't even play MXS so this point is moot) you cannot use this application.

Linux users can maybe use something like Wine to run this but I have not tested this myself so I don't know.

Can I use the setups from MXS Bike Setup application in MXS Garage?

No, the way that setups are saved in MXS Garage would make converting the old setups a nightmare. It can probably be done with some creative programming but honestly once I get around to creating something like this everyone will (hopefully) already be using MXS Garage. So converting wouldn't be necessary anymore.

This application is absolutely free to download and use.However, If you like my work, and wish to support my future programming endeavors to make the MXSer's life easier. You can choose to donate to me here: I would be eternally grateful. And I will add you to the credits of the application, so you can show it to your mom. You can say "Hey, mom. Remember how you said that me playing games would never amount to anything? Well look at me now.. *cue WubWub* *Start dancing*.Works especially well if you're 50 and your mom lives in a retirement home.

Last but certainly not least. I would like to say I had a lot of fun working on this project and will hopefully be working on it for quite a while to come.I really hope you share your opinions on the application with my here, so I can work to improve my craft.Finish with a bad joke "What does the mayonnaise say when you open the refrigerator door?.. SHUT THE DOOR, I'M DRESSING!".

Last edited by Servatis on Sun Sep 01, 2013 6:18 pm, edited 19 times in total.

This tutorial consists of several parts explaining the different features of the application.It will be expanded in future releases and for the release of v1.0 I might even do a little video tutorial.

Lines with a dot in front of it will be instructions

this is an instruction

Starting MXS Garage for the first time.

MXS Garage.

The main menu.

Servers.

Quick connect.

Bike setups.

Skins.

Active windows.

Additional info.

1. Staring MXS Garage for the first time.

When you first start the application you will be greeted with a message asking you to select your MX Simulator installation. this is so that the application knows which .exe you use to launch MX Simulator.you only need to do this once, the application will remember. however if you ever change the name of the .exe or you move your installation of MX simulator. MXS Garage will ask again the next time you start it.

2. MXS Garage.

When I first designed this application I had in mind that it should be an application that can handle a lot of different features and that I could easily add new features to.But at the same time it should not be difficult to use.

So what I did was I stuck with the basic idea that I also had with MXS Bike Setup application. A lot of people are already familiar with this system. And stretch that system to cover all of the other features in the application.This means that from Bike setups to skin setups to servers, it all works on the same principles.

Then all I needed was a system to keep all the different screens organized within the application itself so that there would not be a dozen screens open all over the place. Luckily Windows provided me with the perfect tool to do this, called an MDI form.Basically what this means is that the application can use the big empty area like a sort of Work area. all screens that you open in the application get put on this work area. the screens can be moved around on this but they cannot be moved outside of this area and when you minimize MXS Garage all these opened screens go with it.You will get familiar with this very easily.

All screens you open can be opened from the menu bar at the top. and all these screens are created inside the work area.

3. The main menu.

3.1 Preferences

I start at the preferences screen because it is by far the easiest part. As of now there is only 1 option that can be set which is the color scheme.To change the color scheme just click the drop down box and select a different color scheme. the appearance of the application will immediately change to reflect your choice.When you are happy with your choice you can choose to click the Save button. If you would like to go back to the initial color scheme, you can press cancel or close the preferences screen.

In addition to this setting I also included the Credits and Additional information in the preferences screen. This is mainly because I have plenty of room on this screen. These parts may be moved to their own Screens When the application grows larger.

3.2 Personal and installation folder.

These buttons in the main menu will take you directly to either your personal folder or your MX Simulator installation folder.

4. Servers

Now let's move onto the real deal. creating and editing setups.To demonstrate this we'll be looking at the servers part of MXS Garage since this is the easiest of the 3 that are currently available. If you are familiar with the MXS Bike Setup Application you will know pretty much everything that is explained here, so if you want you can move onto part 5.

click Servers in the menu bar.

click Open Overview.

A Screen will be opened in the work area.You should be able to see 4 buttons (3 of them unavailable).Below that there is a data table and you should be able to see 4 already created servers. these are the official MX Simulator servers pre-created by me.

The first button (a green plus sign) is the create button. Hover over it with your mouse to get a description. You press this button if you want to save a new server address.The other 3 require a server to be selected.

Click any of the already existing servers in the table.

The other buttons should now light up.

The second button is the edit button. Press this button when you want to edit the server you have selected below.The third button is the load button. Pressing this button will load the server address into your config file. There is an easier way to connect to your preferred server which will be explained in the next section of this tutorial.The fourth button is the delete button. Press it to delete the currently selected server, you will be asked for confirmation so don't worry about accidental deleting one.

Right click on a server in the data table.

You should now see a little menu. This menu has the same options as the 4 buttons we just looked at.

Time to create a setup.

Click the button with the green plus.

A new screen should open up, this is the server editor.

You should see a name textbox and underneath that an address textbox.At the bottom are 2 buttons. the first is the save button the other the cancel button.Pressing the cancel button will cancel everything you did in the editor and in this case it will not save the server to the database.The save button is disabled hen you first opened the screen. This is because there are no valid values in the required textboxes (name and address).

Enter a name for the new server address.

Enter the server address. (can be any text for now, it does not have to be a valid server ip since we wont be connecting to it in this tutorial)

You should now notice that the save button has been enabled.

Enter the name Supercross in the name textbox.

Notice how the save button is disabled and how a text appeared underneath the name textbox. the name already exists.

Change the name back to what you named it before.

There is another button on the editor in the top left corner. this button is used to grab the server name out of your config file. You can hover over it to get a description.We will be using it later in this tutorial.

Click save.

If you still have the server overview open (if not open it back up) you should see that your created setup is now added to the database.

Now lets edit this server.

Select your created server by left clicking it.

Click the edit button.

This should once again open the Editor but now with the name and address already filled out, since you are going to edit these values.

Change the name.

Change the address.

Clicking cancel in this case prevents any changes you made from saving and leaves the server as it was.

Click the save button.

Notice on the overview how the server name and address have changed.

That is basically it for the server portion of this application. All other parts of MXS Garage work in a similar fashion. They use the same overview and editor layout which you now know how to use.

Close all open screens

If you want to create a new setup without going through the over view you can select the Add setup option in the Servers menu. This creates an empty editor.

5. Quick connect

On the menu bar is a option called Quick connect. this menu will list all your saved servers and allow you to immediately connect to them by clicking a server.

Click Quick Connect on the menu.

Click on a server (this will launch MX Simulator)

If the address of the server is a valid address MX Simulator will connect to it.

This menu will be changed in future versions to something with a bit more flexibility but for now this will do.

6. Bike setups

This is the big one. If you used MXS Bike setup App then you will remember that all settings were entered into a single setup which resulted in a long list (even longer now after all the additions to MX Simulator) of settings.This was in my experience not the best way to do things. since if I wanted to change something about for example the rider mass distribution I would have to go through all my setups to change it. because I usually always ride with the same rider setups and the thing i change the most are the suspension.So in MXS Garage I aimed to get rid of that problem.

I did this by splitting the bike setup into 3 parts. there is the rider setup, the advanced stability setup and the actual bike setup.A bike setup consists of all the suspension and gearing options as well as a rider setup and a advanced stability setup. Meaning when you create a bike setup you select a rider setup and also an advanced stability setup to link to it.

It might sound a bit strange but lets just jump into creating some bike setups.

Click Bike Setup in the menu bar.

Click Open Overview.

The overview should open up.

Side note: try dragging the screen around and get a feel for how the Work area of MXS Garage actually works. You can't drag anything out of the area since the screens are part of the application.

You should see along with the usual buttons for creating, editing, loading and deleting, the buttons Rider and Advanced Stability, we will get to them later.

First lets have a look at the editor for the bike setups.

Click the create button. (remember you can hover over buttons to see what they do)

The editor should pop into view.

Lets immediately try the button for grabbing settings out of the config file.

Click the button on the top left, the one that looks like a hand grabbing a piece of paper.

Notice how it enters all the suspension and sprocket information.

Enter a name for the setup.

Now notice how the save button has still not been activated.This is because the setup is not done yet. A rider and an advanced stability need to be added to it. but we don't have any.Let's remedy that by creating some.

Move the bike setup editor to the side, you can leave it open for now.

On the bike setup overview click on the Rider button.

A new overview should be opened now, the rider overview.Notice how this overview has no load button. this is because you cannot load a rider setup directly. it always needs to be attached to a bike setup.

Click the create button.

An empty rider editor should be opened.

Let's fill out some values.As you can see next to the settings textboxes there are some numbers in between brackets. these are the limits of the settings.

In vertical spring type 120.

Press tab.

Notice how it jumps back to 100. It will not allow you to enter any value outside of the allowed range.

Press the grab from config button in the rider editor.

all values should be entered automatically.

Enter a name for the rider setup.

the save button should be enabled now.

Click Save

The new setup should appear in the Rider overview.

But more importantly it should also be available to use in a bike setup.

Go back to the bike setup editor you left open in the back ground (if you closed it open a new one)

notice how in the Rider area your new rider setup has automatically appeared for you to use in a setup.

Select the Rider setup in the bike setup editor.

Now all that is missing is the advanced stability setup.

Close the rider overview (we don't need it anymore)

On the bike setup overview click on the Advanced Stability button.

Once again this should open another overview. This time the advanced stability overview.

Click the create button.

In the editor click the grab from config button.

Enter a name for the setup.

Click the save button

The new advanced stability setup should be created.And if you move back to the bike setup editor, the advanced stability area should now have 1 new setup to select.

Note that all settings have been filled out and the save button has been enabled.

Click save.

On the bike setup overview you should now see the new setup. On the data table next to the name, it should give you the name of the rider and advanced stability setups. this means that this bike setup uses those rider and advanced stability setups.

A new feature in MXS Garage is the ability to quickly get an easy to read overview of a single setup.

Double click on the setup that you just created.

You should now see a list of everything in the setup.First the name of the setup and the suspension and sprocket settings.Beneath that the Rider name and it's settings, and the advanced stability name and it's settings.

This way you can easily get an idea of all the settings of a setup.

You can get this list in all overviews, by double clicking a setup.

you can do this in the bike setup editor for rider setups and advanced stability setups as well.

Click the create button on the bike setup overview.

Double click a rider or advanced stability option. (note that double clicking it will also select the setup, so be sure to check if you have the right setup selected after you do this)

Notice the list popup. this way you can easily see the contents of a setup without having to navigate to it's overview.

Click cancel to cancel the creation of a new bike setup.

now to explain the rider and advanced stability linking a bit more.

Create another bike setup using the same rider and advanced stability.

Open the rider overview

Select the rider you used in the 2 bike setups you created.

Click the edit button

Change the name and some settings

Click save

Go back to the bike setup overview

Notice how both of the bike setups have the new rider name displayed. this is because both of the bike setup use the rider setup you just edited.And that is basically the strength of linking these setups together. by changing just 1 setup (the rider) you changed the way 2 bike setups work.So if you have a rider for SX for example you can link that to all your SX bike setups. So you might have 10 bike setups for different SX tracks, and when you want to change something about your rider behavior in SX you just change it in the SX rider setup and it will take effect in all the bike setups it is linked to.

I, for example, have just 1 rider setup that I Use in all my bike setups because I don't really change anything about my rider. And I have 2 advanced stability setups 1 for MX and 1 for SX, that I link to the specific bike setups.This makes it very easy to make changes without having to go through a dozen setups.

I hope this shows what the purpose of this method of creating and saving bike setups is. If you have any more questions about it please post them in this topic.

Close all open screens

7. Skins

This one has some features of it's own that are really quite handy to know about.

Click Skins on the menu bar.

Click Open overview.

Once again the familiar overview screen should open up.

Click the create button on the overview.

You may notice that it takes a little while to open up the editor, this is because MXS Garage is going through your personal folder and installation folder looking up all the skins you have and adding them to the memory of MXS Garage.This means it will only have to scan for your skins once every time you start MXS Garage.The length of time it takes for MXS Garage to load all your skins depends on how many skins you have and how fast your pc is. I have a mid range pc and a 10 GB personal folder and it loads in under a second so I don't expect long load times.

Now you may think "What if I add new skins while I have MXS Garage open?".At any time you can go to the Skins menu in the menu bar and click the "Reload Skin data" button to have MXS Garage search through all your skins again.

Lets make a new skins setup.

Enter a rider name and number

I added these options to the skins setups because often times I find that with different outfits and different bikes I also have a different name or number.Imagine the MXSoN you might have a custom bike and rider skin as well as a different rider name and number.

You may have noticed that Wheels, rider skin and helmet already have something selected but bike skin and bike don't.this is because the wheels, rider skin and helmet lists are automatically filled when you open the editor. but the bike skin is dependent on which bike model you use.

Select a bike model.

Now the default skin should be selected for your bike skin.

open the bike ski list and browse through. only the bike skins that can be used by the model you selected are available in this list.

Now lets look at a new feature.The search box.

As you gain new skins you may have noticed that the lists in MX Simulator get very large. I for example have about 15 pages to flip through in my rider skins.It can get quite hard to find a specific skin, this is why i added a search box.

Right click on the rider skin dropdown list.

This should haven opened the search box. it lists all rider skins and it has a textbox on it.

Start typing something in the textbox.

Notice how as you type it automatically searches through all your skins.

The search system works in a similar way as you would search something in Google. if you type 2 words it searches for those 2 words separately.Type those 2 words in between quotation marks like this "Blue white" it will search for that entire part as a whole. not 2 separate words. you can make any combination of this as you want.Example: "blue white" answer - will search for "blue white" and "answer" and as long as something has both those in it it will show in the results.

The rest works exactly the same as the other parts of MXS Garage.

Once you have found the skin you are looking for all you have to do is click on it in the results list.

click on one of the results from your search.

Notice how the searched skin was automatically entered into the dropdown list.

8. Active windows

This menu is quite handy if you have many screens open.it lists all of the windows you have open within MXS Garage and when you click one of these it brings that window to the front.

9. Additional information

If you have any questions about the application you can post it here in this forum topic I will try to answer them as fast as I can.

I will try to keep this tutorial as up-to-date as possible as new updates are released.

barrington314 wrote:i get to the part where i need to choose my mxsim location. choose it, then i get a error saying mx sim garage has stopped working. and now everytime i try to open it i get the error.